Cemeteries aren't all gloom and doom -- some couples even find love among the tombstones

BRAD WON, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By BRAD WONG, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, October 28, 2007

Paul Elvig, general manager of the Evergreen-Washelli Funeral Home and Cemetery, poses with his wife, LaDonna, also a cemetery employee, among the gravestones there. Elvig knows that love can bloom among the headstones and respectful silence. In fact, he met his wife at a cemetery years ago.
Photo: Andy Rogers/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The well-manicured grounds at the Evergreen-Washelli Cemetery offer tranquillity for thousands of souls. Under grave markers rests a broad section of Seattle residents, including Civil War veterans.

Widows often sit on the turf and talk to loved ones at the North Seattle cemetery. In July, a 93-year-old woman and her daughter died of gunshot wounds at the cemetery in what police believe was a suicide pact. Police believe the elderly woman wanted to be next to her dead husband.

"People picture cemeterians as leaning on a shovel, chewing a straw and waiting to dig a grave," said Paul Elvig, general manager.

But a flip side exists: Flirtatious winks, romantic walks and new beginnings have occurred amid the tombstones -- and among the living.

Couples have quietly celebrated weddings with deceased parents. Others have been married at the cemetery's chapel. And workers have found love after seeing compassion in colleagues.

"You get a chance to see people deal with so many emotional issues. You see them in a way that you don't see in a lot of businesses," said Elvig, 65.

His love story started with a knock on his door. In 1977, he was managing Greenacres cemetery in Ferndale, living in an apartment above its office.

At his door stood LaDonna Rehberger, a red-haired teenager. She was looking for a cemetery maintenance man, whom she later dated.

The two eventually broke up, but she still showed up at Greenacres, hoping to see her former boyfriend.

Instead, she and Elvig started spending more time together, comparing notes about life and dating.

While a sizable age gap exists between the two -- Elvig attended high school with her mother -- their friendship grew. He helped her with her homework. She would do clerical work.

They took walks through the cemetery, threw parties in the apartment and went out to dinner. "It didn't bother me at all," she said. "I don't know why."

One day, she consoled a grieving widower by giving him a plate of barbecue. The man told her, "This is the first time a woman has given me something to eat since Momma died."

Elvig was smitten. "I thought, 'This is quite a lady. Either I'm going to get her a good boyfriend or I'm going to marry her myself.' "

"It was strictly a coincidence," she said. "I like to say it was an act of God."

Since Elvig entered the cemetery industry in 1968, other love stories have unfolded before him. About twice a year, couples ask him about getting married at a family member's gravesite. They often hesitate, Elvig said, thinking others might view the request as strange.

The ceremonies are typically small. Instead of jumping up and down and cheering, though, they are more subdued. "People are basically saying, 'We love our past,' " Elvig said.

For others, the present is what matters. In 1993, construction workers were building a chapel at the cemetery.

Nancy Hansen, the chief financial officer at the time, and her female colleagues eyed an attractive carpenter. To alert each other in the office when he was working, they devised a "Cute Guy Alert" -- a sound similar to an alarm.

"He would wink at her through the window," Elvig recalled. "And she would wink back."

A conversation bloomed into a romance, and they were married in 1995 at the cemetery's new chapel. They thought it was a fitting way to recognize where they met.

"It can be such a struggle when you're dealing with death and grief day in and day out," Hansen said. "You have to see beyond that."

She added that people often find love in the workplace and joked that cemeteries might be the new place to meet significant others.

Elvig and his wife, who says running a cemetery is similar to operating any type of business, also keep their humor intact.

"Given our age difference and the fact that we met each other in a cemetery, I say this is probably where we'll leave each other," Elvig joked.

"I like to say that he robbed the cradle and I robbed the grave," his wife said.

Something, though, must be working. On Sept. 18, the couple celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.